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Lowell school district works to address diversity

The Lowell Sun

Updated:
03/19/2017 06:36:29 AM EDT

Here are some ways the Lowell Public Schools are working to address diversity. Anne Sheehy, the district's director of Personnel and Recruitment, prepared the 2016-2017 Preliminary Workforce Report to present to the School Committee at an upcoming meeting.

* The district is working with the state Department of Education to design a District Licensure Program to train staff members who already have a bachelor's degree. Lowell is waiting on DOE's approval.

"We know that our paraprofessionals are our most diverse group of staff members because our paraprofessionals are people that live in our community, so therefore they reflect our families, our students," Sheehy said. "And we know that, believe it or not, 139 of our paras already have bachelor's degrees so what we're doing is we're designing a district licensure program so that staff members that already have a bachelor's degree will be doing course work and field-based experience in our schools."

Through this field-based experience, or student teaching, Sheehy said staff's expertise will be used to train new teachers. "They'll be working with our students, working with linguistic diversity and the ethnic diversity and everything you see in our urban classrooms," she said. "So, it will be very real and very Lowell-based."

* The district is identifying Lowell High School seniors who are committed to attending Middlesex Community College for its early-childhood education program.

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The district is hoping to train these students to become paraprofessionals in the city. These students are expected to meet with the district next month.

* The district is hosting a Diversity in Education Career Fair on April 27 at Lowell Memorial Auditorium.

* The district is reaching out to potential teachers who attend historically black colleges and universities through an online product called Handshake.

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